The World Only Spins Forward

Tony Kushner is regarded as one of the most famous contemporary American playwrights. His play Angels in America:A Gay Fantasia on National Themes introduces gay characters and themes into the theatrical works in such a visible and overt way. It has been placed the "unenviable position of having to rescue the American theater". The play criticizes various crises in American society, including homosexuality, AID epidemic, political conservatism, religious belief crisis, moral crisis and so on. It is a genuine appeal for equal status and more tolerance to homosexuals. At the same time, Kushner’s Angels in America puts forwards an important question—change. It makes us re-examine the importance of change in contemporary society.My thesis is about the themes of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America. It analyzes the two major themes of the play:AID and homosexuality; stasis and change. The whole thesis is divided into five parts. Chapter one is the introduction of the thesis. It gives a brief introduction to the author and the play—Angels in America. Chapter two talks about the important theme of the play—AIDS and homosexuality. Through discussing two homosexuals—Roy Cohn and Prior Walter who are infected with AIDS, it shows the positive attitude towards these marginal people. Chapter three is another important theme of the play—stasis versus change. It reveals two different worlds. One is a world filled with despair. The other is a world filled with hope. In this chapter, people have changed better, and they rekindled the hope of life. Chapter four contrasts Kushner’s Angel and Walter Benjamin’s Angel, it also discusses the meaning of the Bethesda Angel in the epilogue. Chapter five is a conclusion of the thesis.Through Angels in America, Kushner wants to tell us change and progress are the essential and unavoidable aspects of human life. Although we have suffered a lot, we still should have hope for the future. We will find the hope of bringing the progress to contemporary society. Kushner thinks no matter how difficulty the situation is, we should control it, make it spin forward, and make it progress. As long as there is hope, there is progress.